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Turnout in the local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia was higher at noon than in the European elections last year. Sometimes long lines formed in front of polling stations. By 12 noon, 29.2 percent of those eligible to vote had already cast their vote, as announced in Düsseldorf by a spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of the Interior. In the European elections it was 28.6 percent.
The proportion of voters by mail was significantly higher (19.3 percent) compared to 13 percent in the European elections. The information is based on a sample of eight model municipalities, in which the information was already collected in the previous elections.
About 14 million eligible voters are called to vote on mayors and mayors, district administrators and the councils of local parliaments. Due to the corona pandemic, numerous protective precautions must be observed: at all polling stations, mask requirements and a minimum distance of 1.5 meters apply. Voters must bring their own pen.
Additional voting booths in Lünen due to corona pandemic
Since 1999, the CDU has consistently won the largest number of votes nationally in NRW local elections. In the previous local elections it was also the winner with 37.5 percent, followed by the SPD (31.4), the Greens (11.7) as well as the FDP and the Left (4.7 percent each) . The AfD did not play a significant role with 2.5 percent of the vote.
In Lünen, the city installed additional voting booths on short notice due to high interest and long lines on Sunday. The city had reduced the number of voting booths by about two-thirds to 23, because many voting booths did not offer enough space in times of the crown pandemic.
In Oberhausen, a 76-year-old voter reported waiting nearly half an hour. In Düsseldorf it was only ten minutes, reported a 49-year-old man.
The number of votes by mail had broken all records for municipal elections in the previous period: up to a third of those eligible to vote in numerous cities cast their votes in advance by letter, more than in all previous elections in the federal state. more populous, according to a survey by the German press agency. revealed.
In the state capital Düsseldorf, nearly 30 percent of those eligible to vote had requested their voting papers by mail on Friday, about 127,000 out of 471,000. Compared to the last local elections in 2014, the number of postal voters has nearly doubled, according to a city spokesperson. In Colonia, the most populated municipality, the trend was similar. By Friday, some 820,000 eligible voters had received about 251,000 mail-in ballot requests.
